Rethinking the Civil War Era: Directions for Research by Paul D. Escott

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rethinking the Civil War Era: Directions for Research by Paul D. Escott Daniel E. Sutherland Rethinking the Civil War Era: Directions for Research. Paul D. Escott. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018. ISBN 978-0-8131-7535. 204 pp., cloth, $50.00. This is a useful book, the likes of which is needed every decade or so to place recent [End Page 331] scholarship in perspective. It is equally necessary that someone like Paul D. Escott, who has lived through and contributed to several cycles of Middle Period historiography, provide the analysis. Escott is quick to say that he has not written a "comprehensive" review of the literature. Rather, he has limited himself to issues that match his own interests, although, as it turns out, these cover a wide range of topics. He certainly addresses what may legitimately be called the most popular and relevant areas of research. He begins with a general structural theme that, while not doggedly pursued, strikes a distinct interpretive tone. "It is time," Escott insists, "to modify the longheld and determinedly positive perspective on the Civil War, for celebration of the war's results has been exaggerated." Equally, besides skewing "popular understanding of the war," this "celebratory gloss" has obscured "the limits of American power and the infallibility that our citizens and leaders share with all other human beings." In as much as Escott believes historians have a responsibility to provide both citizens and leaders with "useful" history, it is important, he explains, that Americans, "be informed and mature enough to recognize and learn from national failures as well as successes" (x). Escott then devotes individual chapters to seven broad areas: the causes of the war, the Northern and Southern home fronts, the roles of African Americans, military history, digital research methods, environmental history, and the consequences of the war. Each chapter combines a review of what he deems the most important recent (and, in some instances, forthcoming) publications on these themes with his own suggestions for future investigation, additional analysis, and further reflection. The approach provides maximum flexibility for him to probe, enquire, and speculate, and his admittedly "personal tone" allows Escott to roam freely from topic to topic while also laying the groundwork for potentially lively discussions (xii). No single chapter stands out as markedly better than the others, although, as one would expect, discussions of issues that have only recently become touchstones for research seem the freshest. Most obviously, digital research has been a hot topic throughout the humanities, and Escott believes it "promises to be stronger, more energizing, and more widespread than cliometrics, or computer-assisted quantitative analysis" for several areas of the Civil War (89). Environmental history is not quite as new, but Escott explains how recent scholarship has broadened its definition as well as our understanding of its significance for both soldiers and civilians. Then again, it is interesting (or perhaps sobering) to realize that other projects he believes worthy of exploration sound frightfully familiar, such as determining which theater of war, the western or eastern, was "most important" (75). Some debates, it appears, will never be settled. [End Page 332] This is not to say that Escott fails to give familiar subjects a fresh look. He confirms, for instance, that the consequences of the war can no longer be associated exclusively with the politics of Reconstruction. Even the traditional dates of 1865–77 for interpreting its aftermath have been set aside, he says, as we enter a new era of "far-reaching reevaluations and reconceptualizations" (124). On this issue, too, Escott finds vindication for his insistence that "the war left many things unsettled" and that "the finality usually attached to Union victory" has been exaggerated (130). Of course, there are limits to Escott's analysis. Most notably, and admittedly on his part, he does not bring a wealth of expertise to every subject, a notable contrast to the last significant survey of this type, James M. McPherson and William J. Cooper's edited collection, Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), which benefited from the input of more than a dozen contributors. Inevitably, too, some of Escott's...